Mr. Mercedes (4 page)

Dandelions are sprouting on the lawn. It is definitely time to call Jerome. Lawn aside, Hodges misses his face around the place. Cool kid.

Something else. Even if the psycho
is
telling the truth about feeling no urge to perpetrate another mass slaughter (unlikely, but not out of the question), he's still extremely interested in death. The letter's subtext could not be clearer.
Off yourself. You're thinking about it already, so take the next step. Which also happens to be the final step.

Has he seen me playing with Dad's .38?

Seen me putting it in my mouth?

Hodges has to admit it's possible; he has never even thought of pulling the shades. Feeling stupidly safe in his living room when anybody could have a set of binocs. Or Jerome could have seen. Jerome bopping up the walk to ask about chores: what he is pleased to call
chos fo hos
.

Only if Jerome had seen him playing with that old revolver, he would have been scared to death. He would have said something.

Does Mr. Mercedes really masturbate when he thinks about running those people down?

In his years on the police force, Hodges has seen things he would never talk about with anyone who has not also seen them. Such toxic memories lead him to believe that his correspondent could be telling the truth about the masturbation, just as he is certainly telling the truth about having no conscience. Hodges has read there are wells in Iceland so deep you can drop a stone down them and never hear the splash. He thinks some human souls are like that. Things like bum fighting are only halfway down such wells.

He returns to his La-Z-Boy, opens the drawer in the table, and takes out his cell phone. He replaces it with the .38 and closes the drawer. He speed-dials the police department, but when the receptionist asks how she can direct his call, Hodges says: “Oh, damn. I just punched the wrong button on my phone. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“No bother, sir,” she says with a smile in her voice.

No calls, not yet. No action of any kind. He needs to think about this.

He really, really needs to think about this.

Hodges sits looking at his television, which is off on a weekday afternoon for the first time in months.

5

That evening he drives down to Newmarket Plaza and has a meal at the Thai restaurant. Mrs. Buramuk serves him personally. “Haven't seen you long time, Officer Hodges.” It comes out
Offica Hutches
.

“Been cooking for myself since I retired.”

“You let me cook. Much better.”

When he tastes Mrs. Buramuk's Tom Yum Gang again, he realizes how sick he is of half-raw fried hamburgers and spaghetti with Newman's Own sauce. And the Sang Kaya Fug Tong makes him realize how tired he is of Pepperidge Farm coconut cake. If I never eat another slice of coconut cake, he thinks, I could live just as long and die just as happy. He drinks two cans of Singha with his meal, and it's the best beer he's had since the Raintree retirement party, which went almost exactly as Mr. Mercedes said; there was even a stripper “shaking her tailfeathers.” Along with everything else.

Had Mr. Mercedes been lurking at the back of the room? As the cartoon possum was wont to say, “It's possible, Muskie, it's possible.”

At home again, he sits in the La-Z-Boy and takes up the letter. He knows what the next step must be—if he's not going to turn it over to Pete Huntley, that is—but he also knows better than to try doing it after a couple of brewskis. So he puts the letter in the drawer on top of the .38 (he never did bother with the Glad bag) and gets another beer. The one from the fridge is just an Ivory Special, the local brand, but it tastes every bit as good as the Singha.

When it's gone, Hodges powers up his computer, opens Firefox, and types in
Under Debbie's Blue Umbrella
. The descriptor beneath isn't very descriptive:
A social site where interesting people exchange interesting views.
He thinks of going further, then shuts the computer down. Not that, either. Not tonight.

He has been going to bed late, because that means fewer hours spent tossing and turning, going over old cases and old mistakes, but tonight he turns in early and knows he'll sleep almost at once. It's a wonderful feeling.

His last thought before he goes under is of how Mr. Mercedes's poison-pen letter finished up. Mr. Mercedes wants him to commit suicide. Hodges wonders what he would think if he knew he had given this particular ex–Knight of the Badge and Gun a reason to live, instead. At least for awhile.

Then sleep takes him. He gets a full and restful six hours before his bladder wakes him. He gropes to the bathroom, pees himself empty, and goes back to bed, where he sleeps for another three hours. When he wakes, sunshine is slanting in the windows and the birds are twittering. He heads into the kitchen, where he cooks himself a full breakfast. As he's sliding a couple of hard-fried eggs onto a plate already loaded with bacon and toast, he stops, startled.

Someone is singing.

It's him.

6

Once his breakfast dishes are in the dishwasher, he goes into the study to tear the letter down. This is a thing he's done at least two dozen times before, but never on his own; as a detective he always had Pete Huntley to help him, and before Pete, two previous partners. Most of the letters were threatening communications from ex-husbands (and an ex-wife or two). Not much challenge in those. Some were extortion demands. Some were blackmail—really just another form of extortion. One was from a kidnapper demanding a paltry and unimaginative ransom. And three—four, counting the one from Mr. Mercedes—were from self-confessed murderers. Two of those were clearly fantasy. One might or might not have been from the serial killer they called Turnpike Joe.

What about this one? True or false? Real or fantasy?

Hodges opens his desk drawer, takes out a yellow legal pad, tears off the week-old grocery list on the top. Then he plucks one of the Uni-Ball pens from the cup beside his computer. He considers the detail about the condom first. If the guy really was wearing one, he took it with him . . . but that makes sense, doesn't it? Condoms can hold fingerprints as well as jizz. Hodges considers other details: how the seatbelt locked when the guy plowed into the crowd, the way the Mercedes bounced when it went over the bodies. Stuff that wouldn't have been in any of the newspapers, but also stuff he could have made up. He even said . . .

Hodges scans the letter, and here it is:
My imagination is very powerful
.

But there were two details he could not have made up. Two details that had been withheld from the news media.

On his legal pad, below IS IT REAL?, Hodges writes: HAIRNET. BLEACH.

Mr. Mercedes had taken the net with him just as he had taken the condom (probably still hanging off his dick, assuming it had been there at all), but Gibson in Forensics had been positive there was one, because Mr. Mercedes had left the clown mask and there had been no hairs stuck to the rubber. About the swimming-pool smell of DNA-killing bleach there had been no doubt. He must have used a lot.

But it isn't just those things; it's everything. The
assuredness
. There's nothing tentative here.

He hesitates, then prints: THIS IS THE GUY.

Hesitates again. Scribbles out GUY and prints BASTARD.

7

It's been awhile since he thought like a cop, and even longer since he did this kind of work—a special kind of forensics that doesn't require cameras, microscopes, or special chemicals—but once he buckles down to it, he warms up fast. He starts with a series of headings.

ONE-SENTENCE PARAGRAPHS.

CAPITALIZED PHRASES.

PHRASES IN QUOTATION MARKS.

FANCY PHRASES.

UNUSUAL WORDS.

EXCLAMATION POINTS.

Here he stops, tapping the pen against his lower lip and reading the letter through again from
Dear Detective Hodges
to
Hope this letter has cheered you up!
Then he adds two more headings on the sheet, which is now getting crowded.

USES BASEBALL METAPHOR, MAY BE A FAN.

COMPUTER SAVVY (UNDER 50?).

He is far from sure about these last two. Sports metaphors have become common, especially among political pundits, and these days there are octogenarians on Facebook and Twitter. Hodges himself may be tapping only twelve percent of his Mac's potential (that's what Jerome claims), but that doesn't make him part of the majority. You had to start somewhere, though, and besides, the letter has a young feel.

He has always been talented at this sort of work, and a lot more than twelve percent of it is intuition.

He's listed nearly a dozen examples under UNUSUAL WORDS, and now circles two:
compatriots
and
Spontaneous Ejaculation
. Beside them he adds a name:
Wambaugh
. Mr. Mercedes is a shitbag, but a bright, book-reading shitbag. He has a large vocabulary and doesn't make spelling errors. Hodges can imagine Jerome Robinson saying, “Spellchecker, my man. I mean,
duh
?”

Sure, sure, these days anyone with a word processing program can spell like a champ, but Mr. Mercedes has written
Wambaugh
, not
Wombough
, or even
Wombow
, which is how it sounds. Just the fact that he's remembered to put in that silent
gh
suggests a fairly high level of intelligence. Mr. Mercedes's missive may not be high-class literature, but his writing is a lot better than the dialogue in shows like
NCIS
or
Bones
.

Homeschooled, public-schooled, or self-taught? Does it matter? Maybe not, but maybe it does.

Hodges doesn't think self-taught, no. The writing is too . . . what?

“Expansive,” he says to the empty room, but it's more than that. “
Outward
. This guy writes outward. He learned with others. And wrote
for
others.”

A shaky deduction, but it's supported by certain flourishes—those FANCY PHRASES.
Must begin by congratulating you
, he writes.
Literally hundreds of cases,
he writes. And—twice—
Was I on your mind
. Hodges logged As in his high school English classes, Bs in college, and he remembers what that sort of thing is called: incremental repetition. Does Mr. Mercedes imagine his letter being published in the newspaper, circulated on the Internet, quoted (with a certain reluctant respect) on
Channel Four News at Six
?

“Sure you do,” Hodges says. “Once upon a time you read your themes in class. You liked it, too. Liked being in the spotlight. Didn't you? When I find you—
if
I find you—I'll find that you did as well in your English classes as I did.” Probably better. Hodges can't remember ever using incremental repetition, unless it was by accident.

Only there are four public high schools in the city and God knows how many private ones. Not to mention prep schools, junior colleges, City College, and St. Jude's Catholic University. Plenty of haystacks for a poisoned needle to hide in. If he even went to school here at all, and not in Miami or Phoenix.

Plus, he's a sly dog. The letter is full of false fingerprints—the capitalized phrases like
Lead Boots
and
Note of Concern
, the phrases in quotation marks, the extravagant use of exclamation points, the punchy one-sentence paragraphs. If asked to provide a writing sample, Mr. Mercedes would include none of those stylistic devices. Hodges knows that as well as he knows his own unfortunate first name: Kermit, as in
kermitfrog19
.

But.

This asshole isn't quite as smart as he thinks. The letter almost certainly contains two
real
fingerprints, one smudged and one crystal clear.

The smudged print is his persistent use of numbers instead of the words for numbers: 27, not twenty-seven; 40 instead of forty. Det. 1st Grade instead of Det. First Grade. There are a few exceptions (he has written
one regret
instead of
1 regret
), but Hodges thinks they are the ones that prove the general rule. The numbers
might
only be more camouflage, he knows that, but the chances are good Mr. Mercedes is genuinely unaware of it.

If I could get him in IR4 and tell him to write
Forty thieves stole eighty wedding rings
 . . . ?

Only K. William Hodges is never going to be in an interview room again, including IR4, which had been his favorite—his lucky IR, he always thought it. Unless he gets caught fooling with this shit, that is, and then he's apt to be on the wrong side of the metal table.

All right, then.
Pete
gets the guy in an IR. Pete or Isabelle or both of them. They get him to write
40 thieves stole 80 wedding rings
. What then?

Then they ask him to write
The cops caught the perp hiding in the alley.
Only they'd want to slur the
perp
part. Because, for all his writing skill, Mr. Mercedes thinks the word for a criminal doer is
perk
. Maybe he also thinks the word for a special privilege is a
perp
, as in
Traveling 1st class was one of the CEO's perps
.

Hodges wouldn't be surprised. Until college, he himself had thought that the fellow who threw the ball in a baseball game, the thing you poured water out of, and the framed objects you hung on the wall to decorate your apartment were all spelled the same. He had seen the word
picture
in all sorts of books, but his mind somehow refused to record it. His mother said
straighten that pitcher, Kerm, it's crooked
, his father sometimes gave him money for the
pitcher show
, and it had simply stuck in his head.